A2O-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, June 1, 1991
Hershey School Gives Students An Appreciation Of Dairying
ANDY ANDREWS
Lancaster Farming Staff
HERSHEY (Dauphin
Co.) Teachers often try to
respond to the question kids ask,
“where does milk come from?”
Sometimes kids answer the
supermarket But not the kids at
the Milton Hershey Schools. They
understand where it comes from.
Comprised of some 1,200 stu
dents from preschool to grade 12,
the privately endowed residental
school for needy children recently
began integrating some of the
major aspects of dairy farming and
agriculture into the regular curri
culum. Students can volunteer to
work at one of the 11 dairy farms
on the school premises and experi
ence “hands on” what dairying is
all about.
The school, founded in 1909,
farmed about 12,000 acres at one
Norman Miller, farm manager, pauses to Inspect a straw
berry field at the Milton Hershey School Farms.
Bill McNitt, dairy herdsman, loads a bale of hay for shred
ding and silo storage at the Milton Hershey School Farms.
time. The school’s founder origi
nally set up the dairy farms for the
children, as part of daily “chore
time,” to milk cows.
School farms
Now, however, the school farms
only about 3,200 acres out of 9,000
total acres in the operation. Of the
3,200, only about 2,500 arc till
able. The farm grows about 1,000
acres of com, 250 acres of barley,
250 acres of wheat, 300 acres of
soybeans, and 400 acres of alfalfa.
(The school was recently recog
nized by the Certified Alfalfa Seed
Council as the outstanding alfalfa
producer for the Northeast region
at the council’s 1991 awards prog
ram.) Six thousand remaining
acres are maintained by the Her
shey Trust Company and leased to
other farmers in the area.
The school has a modified TMR
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Scott Hoemer, in tractor cab, cuts alfalfa on the Milton Hershey School Farm. The
school maintains about 400 acres of alfalfa, and was recently recognized as outstand
ing alfalfa producer by the Certified Alfalfa Seed Council.
program on one herd. They also
operate their own feed mill and
make up their own rations, work
ing with the University of Pennsyl
vania. The school also uses forage
analysis to more accurately mea
sure and modify the feed.
Each farm is maintained by a
full-time herdsman. There are a
total of 12 herdsmen and two
supervisors, along with 11-12 sub
stitutes to rotate the work
schedule.
Eleven dairy herds of graded
Holstein are broken into units as
small as 36 per farm to as many as
100 head (housed in a freestall
barn and a double-6 milking par
lor). Breeding is all AI. The farm is
on Pennsylvania DHIA owner/
sampler, with a rolling herd aver
age of approximately 17,000
pounds.
Students volunteer
Students can volunteer to work
on the dairy farms, but are not
required to. Also, students can sign
up to work on the vegetable and
fruit farms at the school.
All this is to allow the students
to experience what farming is real
ly all about
“Most of our students are inner
city students,” said Richard C.
Hann, director of agribusiness at
the school. “They come from the
inner city. They have no idea what
happens out in the nature area.
They don’t know that potatoes
don’t grow on trees. It’s amazing.
It’s that kind of thing we want
them to become more aware of
more of the environmental type
things in nature. I think it has tre
mendous potential.”
The students are made up of
three groups: junior (pre
kindergarten through 4lh grade);
intermediate (sth through Blh
grade); and senior (9th through
12th grade). Only the senior group
can live on the dairy farms.
Intent of program
Hann said that the intent of the
program “was not to necessarily
make agriculture students out of
them,” he said. “It was more or
less a ‘work ethic’ type of situa
tion, giving them a chance to be
part of something. And some of the
students that have gone through
the program have felt that it meant
a lot of things to them.”
The students working together
can contribute their experiences
and knowledge to furthering the
program, according to the director.
The program works because the
students can volunteer and because
of the resources available to them.
“We are so many generations
Mark McCorkel, dairy herdsman, demonstrates the use of
paper bedding at one of the farm locations at the Milton Her
shey School Farms.
iry ismen at the farm inspect the loading of a silo.
Here, Brian Hoerner, farmer/herdsman substitute, watches
the load off the truck into the conveyor.
removed from agriculture,” said chain,” he said. “But our assump-
Norman Miller, farm manager at tions are wrong they don’t
the school. Miller noted that only 2 know. ’ ’
or 3 percent of the entire U.S.
population is directly involved in
agriculture.
“We’re assuming that these
kids know this, about where their
food comes from on the food/fibre
Chain event
Miller said it is up to the instruc
tors at the school to “reinstate that
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